There was no dinner at half past six that evening, or at seven, either.
When the clock struck the hour, there was Mrs. Russell sitting on the
veranda, while her son paced up and down, hands in his pockets, and his
face sulkier than ever. The sun was gone, now, and the clear sky was
fading from lemon-yellow into gray; the honeysuckle was coming to life
in the quiet dusk.
“How long is she going to stay?” he demanded.
Mrs. Russell didn’t like that tone.
“Naturally I didn’t ask her,” she answered, stiffly. “She’s had a great
many--difficulties, and she’s come here, to me, for a rest.”
“D’you mean she’s going to live here?”
She was hurt and amazed at his manner, but it was not her way to show
it.
“Your aunt hasn’t mentioned her plans for the future,” she replied.
He walked up and down in silence for a time, and to his mother there was
something ominous in his steady footfall; it was, she thought, as if he
were going away from her, miles and miles away. Suddenly he spoke again,
from the other end of the veranda:
“Isn’t it hard enough for us to get on as it is?” he asked. “Without an
extra--”
“George!” she cried, too hurt to stifle the cry. “Your own aunt!”
“Oh, let’s look at the thing from a practical point of view!” he
suggested, impatiently. “You know what my salary is, mother, and you
know how far it goes, or doesn’t go.”
“Please!” said Mrs. Russell, curtly. “Surely we needn’t discuss this
now--before your aunt has been in the house an hour.”
“Just as you please!” said he. “But--” Again he walked down to the other
end of the veranda. “All I mean is”--he went on, in a strained unsteady
voice--“that I can’t do any more. I’ve--I’ve done my best, and I can’t
do any more.”
Mrs. Russell sat like a statue in the gathering darkness. She had come
face to face with sorrow and anxiety more than once in her life; she had
had her full share of all that; but never, never before had anything
wounded her like this. So she was a burden to her son.
All the little money left her by her husband she had used for the boy’s
education and welfare, with all her love, her time, all her life thrown,
unconsidered, into the bargain. And now she was a burden to him.
“I’ve lived too long,” she said as if to herself.
Geordie had stopped in his restless pacing to and fro.
“Mother!” he said. “You know I didn’t mean it. Mother! I’m sorry.”
“Very well, my boy!” she answered, in her composed way. “We’ll say no
more about it.”
He came a few steps nearer, but halted; he hadn’t been bred to the habit
of affection. A hundred thousand old impulses that had been stifled by
cool common sense made a great barrier now, just there, a few steps away
from his mother. He turned away again, and Mrs. Russell did not stir.
It was over; that was their sensible way of dealing with all such
matters; not to take them out into the daylight and destroy them, but
to shut them up, to weigh down the heart for many and many a day. They
had ten minutes more alone there in the dusk together, ten long minutes,
and neither of them spoke.
They were, of course, waiting for their luckless guest, and both
silently condemning her unpardonable delay. But, if they could have seen
her just then, down on the floor on her knees beside the neat little bed
in the neat, strange little room, not weeping, but very still, as if a
ruthless hand had struck into quietude all her flutterings.
She had come downstairs, quite airy, quite gay, in a fresh blouse and a
not too dingy skirt, and, standing unnoticed in the doorway, she had
heard her nephew’s words. She had rushed up the stairs again, silent as
a moth, except for the tinkle of countless small hairpins dropping from
her riotous hair, and had sunk down on the floor like this, to taste
failure again.
The clear chiming of the clock roused her. She got up, a little
bewildered for a moment.
“I’ll go away!” she thought, at first. But, after all, her failure had
taught her something. She put more pins into her hair, a little more
powder on her nose; she tried a smile or two before the mirror, and down
the stairs she went, airy as before.
“The only really terrible thing,” she said to herself, “is to fail
because you haven’t tried.”
And so she did try. She sat at the table with her unsmiling and calm
sister, her unsmiling and sulky nephew, and she smiled for three; she
talked, and in the end she made them smile, not because she was
especially witty, but because her sweet, light spirit gave a glimmer to
all her words. She was ridiculous, but she was charming; she made of
that sober family dinner a high festival. And when they had finished:
“Oh, let’s have coffee in the garden, Bella!” she said.
“No!” said Mrs. Russell, startled. “We don’t have coffee, Louie. I think
it keeps one awake.”
“But who doesn’t want to be awake on a night like this? Let’s be awake!
Let’s have a little table on the lawn, and candles--candlelight under
the trees is so wonderful, Bella!”
“Mary won’t like it!” whispered Mrs. Russell. “It means extra work for
her.”
“I’ll do it! All alone!”
Mrs. Russell might have protested more, if she had not observed her son
pushing the books and papers off the top of a small table in the next
room. If he wanted it so, or if he were trying to atone, very well; she
would agree to this absurd proposal.
So the table was placed in the back garden, and there Mrs. Russell and
her son sat, to wait for Louie and the coffee. They sat there under the
great dark beeches that rustled solemnly in the night wind and set the
candles to flickering.
Candlelight wonderful under the trees? It was horrible; it was the most
sorrowful, gloomy, bitter thing. Was that the leaves stirring, or a sigh
from the boy? Mrs. Russell wanted to look at him, but dared not, for
fear that their eyes should meet, and with what lay between them, they
must not look into each other’s eyes. A burden to him--a burden too
heavy for his young shoulders--
Louie came across the grass with the tray, and this time Geordie’s sigh
was quite audible as he arose to take it from her.
“There!” she cried. “Isn’t this nice?”
Her gay voice sounded very pitiful in the dark. Mrs. Russell resolved to
make an effort to help the poor creature.
“Yes,” she said. “It is--very nice.” But no other words came.
There could be no silence where Louie was, though; even if no one spoke,
there was a swarm of dainty little sounds, the clink of a porcelain cup
on its saucer, the musical ring of a silver spoon on the brass tray; the
sugar tongs against the crystal bowl.
“There!” Louie cried again. “Don’t you smoke, Geordie?”
“Thanks!” said he, gloomily, and taking a cigarette from his case, he
leaned forward to light it at the candle.
“Mercy!” exclaimed Mrs. Russell. The two others looked inquiringly at
her, but she said hastily that it was nothing. For she certainly did not
intend to explain what had startled her.
It was the sight of Geordie’s face as he had leaned over the candle. His
blue eyes had seemed to dance and gleam, the flickering light had given
him a look as if smiling in impish glee--altogether, he had looked so
much, so very much, as Louie had looked years ago.
He had drawn back into the shadows, tilting his chair against the trunk
of a tree, and, feeling herself deserted, Mrs. Russell tried to talk to
her sister. Useless! Geordie was there, and could hear if he wished.
She understood what Louie was thinking about--what things she had in her
queer, pitiful life to think about, what compensations she had found for
missing wifehood and motherhood?
“Because she’s not unhappy,” thought Mrs. Russell. “She hasn’t anything
at all, as far as I can see, and yet she’s not unhappy. Perhaps I’m as
much a failure as she is. I meant to help him--to make him happy. But
he’s miserable. I’ve done the best I can; I can’t do any more. It’s as
if his heart was breaking. Why? He has a good salary. I’ve only taken
just enough to keep his home as he likes it. He has plenty for his
clothes and whatever else he wants. I thought--I made him--happy.”
Not one minute more could she endure this soft, dark silence; she wanted
to get into the house, in the lamplight, safely shut into her home, away
from the vast summer night.
“What time is it, Geordie?” she asked, so suddenly that he started.
“Nine,” he replied.
“But what watch is that?”
“A new one.”
“Then where’s the one they gave you at the office, Geordie? Such a
handsome one, Louie! A present to him on his twenty-fourth birthday.
Engraved. Geordie, I hope you haven’t left it about, anywhere. It’s not
a thing to be careless with.”
“No; it’s safe,” he said, briefly.
“Where? In your room?”
“It’s perfectly safe!” he answered, with such a note of exasperation in
his voice that Louie pitied him.
“I’m sure--” she began happily, but her sister interrupted.
“Well, I’m not. You don’t know what a boy that age is capable of. And
it’s a handsome watch. Geordie, I wish--There! Now you’ve broken this
new one! Oh, my dear--”
For, as he arose, his foot had caught in the chair; he stumbled, and
dropped the watch with a thud. It was Louie who recovered it; Louie who
hastily gathered together the small oblong papers that fluttered out of
his breast pocket. One had fallen at Mrs. Russell’s feet; she stooped.
“What--” she began; but Louie fairly snatched it out of her fingers.
“Here, Geordie!” she said, gayly.
Mrs. Russell did not know what these tickets were, but Louie did. Louie
knew well.